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Sound Rivers Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz and Stormwater Education Coordinator Sierra Stickney (Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps member) hosted a Saturday trash trap cleanout in New Bern — with a slew of new volunteers.

“We removed 50 pounds of trash from the trash trap, which included two un-matching shoes and lots of plastic bottles,” Emily said.

The New Bern trash trap is located on Duffyfield Canal, on the edge of Henderson Park. Sound Rivers has installed a total of 10 of these passive litter-collection devices on urban waterways throughout the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico watersheds, as part of its Litter-Free Rivers program. The Litter-Free Rivers program launched with a Jack’s Creek, Washington, installation in May of 2022. Since, nine more trash traps have been added: on Duffyfield Canal, Little Rock Creek in Raleigh, Adkin Branch in Kinston, Greens Mill Run in Greenville, East Tarboro Canal in Tarboro, three more were recently added on Marsh Creek in Raleigh (in partnership with the City of Raleigh, The Great Raleigh Cleanup and N.C. State University), as well as a second Washington trash trap on a small tributary of Jack’s Creek.

The next trash trap will be installed on Little Creek in Clayton in May.

If you or your group would be interested in working for water quality by volunteering to clean out a trash trap or Adopt a Trash Trap for a month, check out the following: 

More information about the Adopt A Trash Trap program.

Find out when and where the next trash trap cleanouts are scheduled — we’d love to have your help!

Like Sound Rivers’ ever-expanding Litter-Free Rivers program? We definitely do! Donate to support keeping your waterways litter-free!

Resilience Corps NC AmeriCorps is a service program of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, funded by a grant through the North Carolina Governor’s Commission on Volunteerism.